Get all the cash a survivor could want with a simple exploit found in Dying Light. Fans of Techland’s FPS-RPG series might even recognize this basic cheat, allowing our hero to create unlimited copies of the same melee weapons. It’s easy and fun, but if you’re looking for a fairly balanced game experience, this might be one glitch you skip.

Don’t miss out on our Dying Light cheats list where we compile every collectible, secret location, or hidden extra in the slums of the zombie apocalypse.

Earn Infinite Cash & Duplicate Weapons [Exploit Guide]

Duplicate any weapon in Dying Light after earning the Throw Melee skill in a handful of easy steps.

Go spelunking for hidden treasure and Destiny-related Easter eggs in Dying Light with this cool hidden cave location. With emphasis on the survival part of survival-horror, your parkour hero needs to scrounge for goods. While the cave isn’t exactly a treasure trove, it’s still a cool secret place to uncover. See where to go with the full explanation below.

When you’re ready to see what else Harran has to offer, browse through our Dying Light cheats list.

Destiny Loot Cave Easter Egg [Location Guide]

Uncover a hidden underwater cave in the far northeastern corner of the Slums. Travel to the safe house along the eastern border closest to the shore’s north edge.

Leave the shanty town and cross the water, heading north along the rocky wall until it shifts left. Follow the narrow trench until reaching a pair of wooden boards. Climb over the obstruction and dive into the water.

Enter the cave to get a message: “Your Destiny is to build your legend and get loot.”

Underwater you’ll find a narrow passage leading into a hidden cave. Look along the right wall for another path, taking you to more water. Jump in and swim along the let wall to finally reach a second open-air cavern.

This is where you’ll finally find a treasure chest. It isn’t over yet — turn left, climb up the rock wall in the dead end to discover a second duffel bag.

Become king of the zombie-slayers with a unique sword hidden away in Dying Light. The EXPcalibur rests embedded in a stone far off in the waters of Harran. It takes one long swim to reach, but this fun little reward is worth it. See a guaranteed loot location and get the Easter egg weapon with our quick guide below.

Work-In-Progress: We’re still learning about the EXPcalibur. Found any other cool Easter Eggs or secret weapons? Let us know in the comments!

This special sword randomly appears in certain types of loot containers, but it is always located in one specific spot on the map.

In the southeast corner of the map, you’ll find a large lake. Travel to the boat house — the blocked bridge should be on your left. Follow the rocky shore on your right to the very edge. Out in the middle of the lake, you should be able to spot a tiny island.

It takes a lot of swimming, at least several minutes to reach the single rock in the far distance. Climb up onto the mossy side to discover a body holding the special sword.

The sword’s loot icon should say “This EXPcalibur belongs to me.” Search it like any other container to grab the weapon and claim it for yourself on the ground. It takes a ridiculously long time to loot, so hold down the search button until it’s complete.

That zombie corpse bursts into flames the minute the EXPcalibur is free. It can’t be repaired, so the EXPcalibur counts as a unique weapon. Once it’s broken, the sword is gone for good.

The EXPcalibur is incredibly powerful but very brittle. It only takes a handful of hits until this weapon is broken down — but it’ll kill most zombies in a single hit before then.

Try collecting this cool sword late in your campaign; like all weapons the stats scale with your level.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/dying-light-cheats/feed/2GameFront’s Game of the Year 2014http://www.gamefront.com/gamefronts-game-of-the-year-2014/
http://www.gamefront.com/gamefronts-game-of-the-year-2014/#commentsTue, 23 Dec 2014 19:37:44 +0000GameFront Staffhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=295176

It’s that time of year again – the time when we hand out our Game of the Year award.

This is never an easy decision. Even in a year with as many problems as 2014, there are still a lot of games that could be in the discussion for Game of the Year. If you want to see how each of our staff members ranked the games of 2014, make sure you check out our Staff’s Top 5 lists.

After much discussion and discourse, we happily present to your our consensus top 5 games of the year, and our Game of the Year for 2014.

I’m going cut to the chase right away: Dark Souls 2 is just as incredible as both prior games in the Souls series.

It’s the rare 50-plus-hour game that never feels padded, never feels like it is wasting your time, and constantly provides the player with unforgettable moments of both triumph and failure. It’s the rare sequel that manages to retain all of the core aspects of what makes the series so spectacular, while changing nearly everything around that core to allow the game to have its own unique identity.

And all of these changes come without compromising the brutal difficulty for which the series has gained such a notorious reputation. In fact, in many ways, Dark Souls 2 is even harder than its predecessors. It’s certainly not for everyone, and that’s a shame, because Dark Souls 2 is a prime example of how rewarding and satisfying playing video games can be.

This is The Talos Principle: You’re a living human playing a computer simulation as a robot playing a computer simulation, and answering philosophical questions posed by another computer about the nature of what it is to be a person.

That’s where The Talos Principle really captures some magic as a game: it pulls you in and engages you on a number of levels, with its huge series of puzzles, its narrative, its meta-narrative, and its meta-meta-narrative. Even if it were just a straight puzzler, it would be a great game whose conundrums constantly belie conceptually simple solutions that usually require you to simply adjust your thinking a bit. It’s constantly rewarding you with those moments in which you exclaim, “Of course!” when a nagging solution suddenly becomes obvious.

But there’s a lot more ambition at play from Croteam and writers Tom Jubert (FTL, The Swapper) and Jonas Kyratzes (The Sea Will Claim Everything). The deep discussions of philosophy and humanity might interest everyone, but The Talos Principle does a beautiful job of utilizing the medium of games to convey ideas and narrative in a uniquely “video game” way.

It’s a game that aspires to be more than what we traditionally expect, and one that has an intangible quality that makes it more than the sum of its parts. It’ll stay with you after you’ve completed it and call you back to explore its hidden corners to see what else you’ll uncover there.

The major triumph of Inquisition is how well the world is built around you. There are so many little things to find, whether it’s notes from people long gone, tomes of ancient wisdom, or just an abandoned old bottle of wine, and each of them helps make the world feel more real.

The story presents choices that remind us that even when you’re striving for good, there are myriad ways to reach the destination you have in mind. Should you execute the man who tried to kill you, slap him in chains, or put him to work? All of the decisions you make have repercussions, as certain party members or even entire factions may object to your choices. Better than either of the previous Dragon Age games, Inquisition makes you feel as if you’re affecting the world with nearly every choice you make.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is a huge moment for Bioware. In crafting a stellar RPG, it has shown those who thought the developer might be past its prime that it still has what it takes. Bioware also assuages the fears of folks like me, who thought the company was ditching high-end PC titles for console parity. In short, the developers have gone a long way toward winning me back.

Regardless of how you feel about Bioware, you owe it to yourself to give Dragon Age: Inquisition a try. It’s a great game from start to finish, one that lets you do just about whatever you want, and then rewards you for just about all of it. While it does have some minor problems, they don’t detract from the quality of the whole. The way the world responds to, and builds itself around, your character makes Inquisition a must-play for any RPG enthusiast.

In many ways, it feels like Triple-A gaming in 2014 is ending on a sour note.

We have major releases filled with bugs, normally accessible content that’s locked behind paywalls, and that doersn’t even mention hotly anticipated games that failed to set the gaming world on fire at release date. Fans are disappointed, and it’s becoming more and more common to see complaints raised against the Triple-A model itself.

I don’t spend too much time worrying though, because I’m having far too much fun playing LEGO Batman 3. Everything we love about Triple-A games — the epic plots, the open worlds, the massive range of character options — is all here, encapsulated in pleasing LEGO blocks and a healthy dose of fun. Every moment playing this game feels like I’m discovering something new, where rounding a corner reveals anything from the 1960s Batman set to an entire planet to explore.

After completing the story campaign, taking on a ton of side quests, and uncovering all the hub worlds, I’ve barely completed a third of everything LEGO Batman 3 offers. And I want to keep going. I’m having a great deal of trouble remembering any Triple-A game in the past decade that made me feel that way, especially once the main story was finished. Sure, that might just mean this game hits my personal nostalgia buttons, and the series has always had its share of flaws. But I suspect I’m not the only one who knows developer Traveller’s Tales struck upon something a lot of Triple-A titles lack: Unbridled fun.

What’s interesting, however, is how LEGO games have increasingly adopted Triple-A trappings and mechanics without sacrificing this joyful energy.

It didn’t happen in a rushed or haphazard fashion either. First, Traveller’s Tales figured out what exactly makes its LEGO franchises work. Then it refined and expanded the mechanics, slowly experimented with new features, and quickly switched gears when something wasn’t working. This model not only brought Traveller’s Tales success, it made it possible to release multiple LEGO games every year without fans getting tired of them.

By comparison, 2005’s LEGO Star Wars seems modest by today’s standards. It didn’t have any voice actors. Levels were simplistically linear. Yet it struck upon something gamers would see less and less of in a console generation increasingly geared towards dark, modern shooters. It was colorful, fun for all audiences, and effectively designed around both single and cooperative play. Death hindered you for only a second before letting you jump back into the game, without a “game over” screen acting like a slap on the wrist.

And while LEGO Star Wars was perfectly happy to lampoon the prequels, it did so affectionately, showing love for the franchise and attention to detail in its craftsmanship.

LEGO Star Wars proved to be a massive success, leading to a Star Wars original trilogy edition the following year. Shortly afterwards, Traveller’s Tales showed the concept could be applied to other franchises, including Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Harry Potter. Traveller’s Tales could have stuck with the parody model forever, and fans likely would have continued to devour each installment. But eventually, LEGO games started thinking bigger and experimenting with mechanics that were normally only the domain of larger studios.

LEGO Star Wars 3, while not as well-received critically, was still willing to take creative risks. This game was the only one to experiment with real-time strategy mechanics, allowing players to take control of LEGO units on a digital battlefield. Vehicle levels included the ability to jump outside to fight on foot. Combo moves were added as quick-time events to get past certain obstacles.

LEGO Batman 2 expanded the game’s hub into a fully open-world version of Gotham City, complete with the Batcave and Arkham Asylum. At any time between missions, players could simply wander off and explore, whether on foot or driving vehicles like the Batmobile. While the linear storyline could be enjoyed without once exploring the full city, doing so let you unlock new characters, usually by tracking down villains who had escaped during one of Arkham’s many breakouts.

Adding voice actors was a significant shift from earlier games, and one that wasn’t entirely welcome from fans at first. Many argued that it would sacrifice the charm of classic LEGO games, which expressed each characters personality using cartooonishly exaggerated movements and sounds. But adding voice actors increased the ability of LEGO games to tell original narratives. LEGO City Undercover was basically a cop movie parody told in LEGO form, while LEGO Marvel Superheroes and LEGO Batman 3 told new stories inspired by current comic book lore.

Meanwhile, the scope of LEGO games only continues to increase. LEGO Lord of the Rings lets players traverse all of Middle-earth by foot. LEGO Batman 3 frames its story campaign across 13 interconnected hub worlds, reaching from Earth to distant planets like Oa and Qward. While scheduling constraints preventing The Battle of Five Armies inclusion in LEGO The Hobbit, Traveler’s Tales intends to release it as a complete DLC campaign. All the while, each subsequent game continues to push the boundaries for the number of playable characters it can pack into a single title.

Today, Traveller’s Tales has reached the point where it can publish four games a year across various platforms, some of which feature DLC. Elsewhere in the Triple-A world, franchises such as Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty struggle with releasing a fraction of that content annually, leaving fans frustrated with bugs or fatigued with market saturation in the process.

That’s not to say LEGO excels in every area; many of its games have been criticized as repetitive and LEGO Batman’s latest DLC story levels have been atrocious. But after 10 years, we’re not fed up with LEGO in the same way gamers got tired of modern warfare games or realistic violence simulators.

Traveller’s Tales has guided LEGO from a modest parody franchise to a blockbuster success comparable to the rest of the Triple-A market. That’s a hard path for many studios to follow, yet the series continues to improve as the studio refines its development process.

Imagine what it would be like if more of the Triple-A industry followed their example; starting small, experimenting with new mechanics, learning from mistakes, and refining the experience over time.

At the very least, I suspect more gamers would spend more time having fun than complaining about what went wrong.

Editor’s Note: All this week, we’ll be featuring the top 5 games of 2014 from each of our individual staffers, culminating in our Game of the Year announcement next week. Stay tuned!

No matter what your year has been like, you should be able to agree with me on this: 2014 was an interesting year for video games.

Old franchises returned, new franchises sprung up, and indie games continued to play a major role in the industry. Somehow, the year as a whole feels a little disappointing. There were the launch issues with online games (again), and there’s no sign of companies getting better at rolling them out. Games that we really wanted to play this year got delayed (The Witcher 3) or even cancelled (Prey 2). Still, 2014 managed to toss out some solid titles that are definitely worthy of this top 5 list.

Here we go.

5. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

Borderlands is one of those games that you either love or hate. It’s so distinctive in its design that you rarely finds someone who’s just middle of the road about it. After sinking hundreds of hours into Borderlands 2, I was skeptical of Gearbox’s plan to let someone else make a sequel, especially given how that had worked out on other games. Luckily, 2K Australia took the franchise and knocked out a quality sequel that’s great at scratching that Borderlands itch.

Set between the two existing Borderlands titles, The Pre-Sequel tells the story of Handsome Jack’s rise to power with the same irreverent humor and ridiculous amounts of firepower as the first two games. Add in the really cool implementation of low gravity on the moon, and you’ve got yourself another 100+ hours of entertainment.

4. Dragon Age: Inquisition

Dragon Age lost its way as a series with the disappointing Dragon Age 2, and I was curious to see how Bioware would bounce back, especially since the Mass Effect 3 controversy had left such a bad taste in the mouths of so many fans. Dragon Age: Inquisition was a major bounce-back title for the studio, and one that was desperately needed.

Casting you as the leader of The Inquisition, the latest Dragon Age pits you against a relentless evil, and succeeds by keeping that threat front and center. As you progress through Inquisition’s beautiful, varied landscapes, you’ll find yourself constantly working not only to improve the lot of the Inquisition, but to stave off the threat that looms over the entire world. It’s a departure from the smaller scale worries of Dragon Age 2, and the game is much improved for it.

Inquisition is everything you’d expect from a Bioware title: Plenty of customization alongside lots of story. Give it a chance, and you’ll find yourself immersed in everything the continent of Thedas has to offer.

Storytime is a recurring series in which we analyze the storytelling found in video games by looking at the elements that form those stories, the messages they deliver, and the people who create them.

Spoiler Alert! This post concerns the complete story of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and thus is full of spoilers. Don’t read on if you’re hoping to experience the story fresh.

The Lord of the Rings is a story most concerned with the idea of power.

One of the best scenes in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkein’s novels concerns the corruption and redemption of Boromir in The Fellowship of the Ring. A member of the Fellowship, Boromir is a captain from Gondor, the country of Men for whom stemming the tide of orcs flowing from Mordor has been a constant struggle for years.

While the rest of Middle-earth has enjoyed relative peace, Gondor has paid for that peace with its people’s blood. And as Mordor has gained in power with Sauron regathering his strength, the battles at the Black Gates of Mordor have become even worse. At Elrond’s Council, Boromir advocates using the One Ring to fight back against the Enemy, and his thinking is for his people at the time, not for the personal gain of power.

But the One Ring is ultimate power, and can’t be wielded by anyone. It corrupts everything it touches, from Isildur, its first bearer after Sauron’s defeat, to Smeagol, who would later become Gollum, to Bilbo Baggins, who actually wore and thought of the Ring very little. Desire for the Ring corrupts Saruman, a formerly good character, and causes him to become almost as evil as Sauron himself. Even Frodo Baggins, the most resilient, steadfast, and arguably purely good of the Ring’s carriers, suffered gravely from its corrupting influences.

Boromir is not so strong, and he attacks Frodo at the end of Fellowship, momentarily losing his mind to the Ring’s corrupting influence. His intentions are good, but his lust for power overcomes him. Frodo escapes, and moments later, Boromir comes to his senses. At the same time, Saruman’s Uruk-hai attack the party, and Boromir finds himself fighting them alone in defense of the other hobbits, Merry and Pippin. Though he fights valiantly, Boromir dies from the wounds he sustains in battle, but not before he has a moment to repent for the sin of letting the wish for power to overwhelm him.

The Lord of the Rings tackles this theme, of the corruption of power and the redemption of friendship, over and over again through its three-movie run (and obviously in Tolkein’s original novels as well, but they’re a little less relevant to this discussion). Sauron created the Rings of Power, and gifted them to elves, dwarves and men, knowing they wouldn’t be able to pass them up — and sure enough, the rings damn the nine men who wear them, turning them into Sauron’s Nazgûl.

All this concern for the theme of power corrupting otherwise good people makes Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor a bit of a weird case. Like many video games, it’s 100 percent concerned with player power fantasy. As a human Ranger called Talion who is possessed by the wraith Celebrimbor, you’re constantly becoming stronger and stronger as you fight through Mordor. Eventually, you even come to dominate the minds of orcs and raise an army to challenge Sauron — not unlike Saruman’s plan.

Shadow of Mordor seems like it’s positioning itself to expand on Tolkein’s ideas for much of its story, even though it’s a bit disjointed. The longer Talion’s campaign in Mordor goes on, the more he seems to question it. The first time he dominates an Uruk, he feels it’s wrong. It’s one thing to kill Uruks, Talion says to Celebrimbor, and another to steal their free will.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/shadow-of-mordors-celebrimbor-isnt-a-bad-guy-but-he-should-have-been/feed/12More Witcher 3 Screenshots Straight From Russiahttp://www.gamefront.com/more-witcher-3-screenshots-straight-from-russia/
http://www.gamefront.com/more-witcher-3-screenshots-straight-from-russia/#commentsThu, 02 Oct 2014 20:17:26 +0000Jeff Millshttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=286745Straight from the Igromir Expo that takes place in Moscow, Russia, CD Projekt RED shows off more eyecandy of the third chapter in the Witcher series.

A mistimed button press results in a missed counter-attack, and suddenly there’s a vicious orc standing over your slumped body, laughing and savoring his victory.

You’ll return to life, of course, because this is a video game. But in Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, time passes between your death and your return to life. And in that time, your enemies will grow stronger. The orc lieutenants scattered around Mordor will fight amongst themselves for power, and the survivors will gain strength and experience. New fiends will be elevated to take the places of the slain. And the champion who defeated you will remember what he learned from killing you — and use it to try to kill you again.

Developer Monolith Productions calls this Shadow of Mordor’s “Nemesis” system, and in action, it means the armies of Mordor you constantly fight in the game are a lot deeper than just hordes of faceless green folks you hack apart (although there are still hordes of faceless green folks you hack apart). Director of Design Michael De Plater said Monolith is hoping for a situation in which players feel a real connection to the enemies they fight, creating rivalries and fueling the need for revenge.

A big portion of Shadow of Mordor is the player’s battle to raise an army of orcs to turn against Dark Lord Sauron’s Black Captains, the lieutenants who are attempting to organize and strengthen Mordor’s military might. The story of the game takes places between author J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and the chief goal of protagonist Talion is to disrupt the Mordor war machine being built to attack the rest of the world.

Rather than have Monolith create villains to face down and show players cutscenes or scripted sequences meant to infuse them with emotional significance, however, De Plater said the developers want to let those enemies develop naturally. The devs will even work them into the overall story, he said — expect to see your most hated foes crop up at pivotal boss fights. Literally any enemy can eventually become a boss through the Nemesis system.

Monolith is hoping for a situation in which players feel a real connection to the enemies they fight.

At a preview event ahead of PAX Prime this week, Monolith gave journalists a chance to play with the Nemesis system, and it seems as though it’ll go far to make Shadow of Mordor feel like a reactive, living place as players adventure through the sandbox world of the game. This particular portion of the game required that players work to raise their own armies by taking down local orc warchiefs. To do that, you’ll use some of Talion’s Wraith abilities, which are bestowed on him by the spirit of the long-dead elf Celebrimbor. Fans familiar with deep Tolkien lore will recognize the name as belonging to the greatest smith of the Second Age of Middle-Earth (The Hobbit and LoTR take place in the Third Age), who aided Sauron in creating the dreaded Rings of Power, and it’s through Talion’s bonding with Celebrimbor that the human gains his supernatural powers.

Though there are plenty of Wraith powers that’ll be useful in combat, the chief ability in the game is that of dominating foes’ minds and turning their loyalties. You won’t be facing down orc warchiefs just to kill them — although you certainly can. Your primary goal is to dominate them and turn their allegiances, thereby gaining all the underling orcs that fight with them.

In the hands-on session, players worked to take on five different warchiefs, who can be approached through a number of different means. First off, players have to gain intelligence information about their foes, either through collectibles found throughout the world, or by dominating warchiefs’ captains. These are lesser orcs who are still above the rank-and-file of Mordor’s forces. Like warchiefs, captains have a number of strengths and weaknesses you’ll learn through gaining intel. You might find out that a captain or warchief is immune to ranged attacks, for example, but is deathly afraid of certain monsters. You can dominate the beasts of Mordor as well as soldiers to bolster your forces, and even ride those monsters into battle if you so choose.

That, at least, will the case if a date recently posted on the game’s page at the Microsoft Store is correct. While neither Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment or Rocksteady have yet to confirm if this date is real, it would potentially line up with a delay announced by the game’s developers earlier this month.

The date itself was originally discovered by a NeoGAF member who took a screen capture and posted it on the forum. It’s also perhaps worth noting that this date only covers the Xbox One version. Granted, this just could because the date’s wrong or that Sony’s waiting to leak a date of its own on the PlayStation page. Regardless, we’ll be interested to see if February 24th in fact winds up being the day that gamers get to step back into the Dark Knight’s cape and cowl. We will, of course, be reaching out to the involved parties to find out what we can learn.

There’s a reason so many games choose to incorporate the free running parkour movement of titles such as Mirror’s Edge, Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time — it makes just getting around the game world enjoyable.

It’s what makes people remember titles like last generation’s Spider-Man 2: The Game so fondly. It’s not like the movie adaptation of the film was a particularly great game, but it made fluid movement around a huge New York fun, and just being able to enjoy existing in a game space can take a title a long way.

Dying Light, then, at least understands this about free running. Dead Island developer Techland has taken much of the formula of its original open world zombie game — craftable weapons, tons of running undead, and intense fights — and reworked the way players get around the world to add a serious amount of freedom. And despite myself and my relative dislike for Dead Island, I find myself with fairly high hopes for Dying Light.

At E3 2014, I had my first chance to play Dying Light, and several elements were appealing straight away. First and foremost, the game’s parkour system is highly intuitive. The right bumper on the Xbox One controller I used basically controlled all catching of ledges and jumping, such that it makes scaling buildings extremely easy. Just about everything is climbable, Techland developers told me — I was able to pull myself up the side of a stone bridge from a nearby canal, for example, using the uneven bricks as handholds.

There’s an emphasis on traversal that really opens up Dying Light in a way that Dead Island always felt lacking. Getting around the world in that zombie game was always a pain, and given its incredible size and the number of busywork activities packed into it, travel could make Dead Island rather dull. Dying Light, on the other hand, turns every trip to a safehouse or an objective into a puzzle of its own; there are zombies between here and there, and you need to find the best path that will allow you to accomplish your goals without being eaten.

The game also does progression in a way that rewards players for their attention to movement. Rather than awarding points earned by leveling up, RPG-style, as in Dead Island, Dying Light increases players’ strength based on the actions they take. The more you climb, the better you become at climbing. The more you fight, the stronger a fighter you become.

It’s something of an Elder Scrolls-like system. Combat in the demo I played hews close to Techland’s original standard in Dead Island, consisting of lots of melee weapons and a few firearms with limited ammo. You can cleave off limbs and set enemies on fire with your various weapons, all of which can be crafted in the world in order to make newer, more ridiculous ones. But zombies offer much more resistance in battle, and tend to be grabbier and bitier than in other zombie games. That means that while you’ll get good at fighting, you’re going to want to skip battles as often as you get into them. It also means you’ll think twice about firing that gun into a crowd of enemies for fear of drawing more toward the sound.

Leveling up your parkour and fighting abilities lets you unlock new additional capabilities, like a slide move or a charged-up attack. In general, it makes getting around and fighting feel important and meaningful as you’re doing it, and the game rewards you naturally to make you better at each activity — as if you were getting stronger and becoming a better survivor over time.

But mostly, what’s interesting about Dying Light right now is that getting Techland seems to be making getting around at least as important as combat, and probably even more fulfilling. Especially in moments like the game’s night cycle, where more powerful zombie versions hunt players and stealth is required for survival, the parkour system adds a great deal more strategic thinking to how players approach the game. Where Dead Island suffered in travel by often requiring players to pick their paths in ways that would let them avoid tedious and dangerous battles, Dying Light is putting the emphasis on requiring that kind of forethought because its open world is potentially a tougher place to be.

In my preview of Dying Light, avoiding zombies was at least as fun as fighting them, and that’s an idea many games with this sort of setting and attitude don’t really achieve well. Some of the best moments of Dead Island are the harrowing escapes from the undead hordes, but Dying Light’s emphasis on them could make it a lot more engaging long-term.

If we have to revisit the zombie apocalypse for yet another time, at least giving players new ways to think about approaching its ever-present dangers could freshen things up a bit. With so many different takes on the same undead monsters, Dying Light might stand on its own by making the journey, rather than the dismemberment, the worthier part.

We also know the game is being written by Christian Cantamessa, the writer of Red Dead Redemption, Manhunt and Manhunt 2, and has a soundtrack by composer Gary Schyman, who did music for all three BioShock titles.

We’ll be seeing more of Shadow of Mordor at E3 2014, but at the very least, the game seems to be packing a solid lineup of talent in some key audio and story departments. The trailer also might suggest some story beats — for instance, is that the hilt of Narsil, the sword Isildur used to take the One Ring off Sauron’s hand, and which was reforged and wielded by Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings? It sure looks it, and maybe getting hold of those sword shards is what this whole game is about.

Then again, I’m a bit fuzzy on my extensive LOTR lore, so feel free to correct me with your own speculations in the comments.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/troy-baker-leads-shadows-of-mordor-cast-red-dead-writer-pens-script/feed/5Batman: Arkham Knight Debut Screenshots (Gallery)http://www.gamefront.com/batman-arkham-knight-debut-screenshots-gallery/
http://www.gamefront.com/batman-arkham-knight-debut-screenshots-gallery/#commentsWed, 21 May 2014 20:05:15 +0000Jeff Millshttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=274060The last title of the Arkham series has been announced. Batman: Arkham Knight will include a “who’s who” of Batman universe super-villains as well as a drivable Batmobile.

Here’s a few teaser shots to show how good this game will look in 1080p glory. You can find the trailer here.

In this trailer, we get educated on how the run upgrade system works and the weapons that will be available to the hero of the story.

The rune upgrade system appears to be just like any other weapon upgrade system in any game that lets you upgrade weapons. However, from what we can tell on the video, don’t expect to find those epic level runes from simple trash you kill wandering around aimlessly throughout Middle-Earth. No, if you want the good stuff, you’re going to have to earn it by killing the Orc Captains and their posse (A boss fight, really).